Noun: Definition, Forms, Types, and Cross-Linguistic Variation

The term noun is shortened from Late Latin nomen substantivum "noun referring to a substance". The basic meaning of nomen is "name"; in the Romance languages (French nom, Spanish nombre, etc.), the term for 'noun' always also has the meaning "name". By substance is meant here approximately "independently existing entity", in contrast to properties and processes, which do not exist independently, but - in the form of adjectives or verbs - are attributed to substances.

The noun traditionally includes the nomen substantivum, the nomen adjectivum (adjective), the nomen numerale (numeral) and the pronoun. Among these, the noun is the noun par excellence, since precisely the literal meaning of nomen is "name", which fits the other subcategories of the noun less. Hence, since the 20th century, the noun is usually called noun in English (besides substantive), nom in French, and similarly in some other languages. This usage has also come into German since the 1960s, so that noun is often used not as a generic term but as a synonym of noun.

In German grammar, noun has been translated as Dingwort, Gegenstandswort, Hauptwort, and noun as Namenwort, Nennwort. However, the term Gegenstandswort is ambiguous, because it is also a term for Konkretum in contrast to Begriffswort or Abstraktum.

Basics

The two operations of reference and predication are essential to human language. They are encoded in various ways in the grammar, including in particular the two parts of speech 'noun' and 'verb'. A distinction between a nominal and a verbal category is apparently made in all languages, while there are certainly differences with respect to the individual nominal parts of speech.

Like all parts of speech, the category of the noun has semantic and structural features. The essential semantic feature of the noun is its referential function, i.e. its potential to refer and thus to stand opposite the predicate as a referential expression. It is primarily in this function that temporally stable entities occur, i.e. entities that are conceived as unchanging over time. These are primarily concrete objects such as things, living beings, etc. However, these semantic categories are not constitutive of the notion of noun, but follow precisely from the primary function of referentiality. Often one also wants to refer to (typically less time-stable) entities that do not fall into any of these categories, such as "the beautiful", "investigating", etc. For this purpose, nouns (beauty, investigation) are provided by nounification (of beautiful, investigate) (see below on word formation).

By the criterion of lexical meaning, the noun is opposed to the pronoun, which may fall into the same syntactic category as the noun (in German, the personal pronoun has the same distribution as the proper noun), but in any case has no lexical meaning (but a grammatical function).

The structural features of nouns vary between languages. Nevertheless, on the basis of the above semantic properties, it is possible to identify the category of the noun across languages.

Schedule lines

Nouns can be classified primarily according to semantic, syntactic and morphological properties. The result is classifications that are largely independent of each other. A purely syntactic classification is based exclusively on distributional criteria, e.g. the combinability of a noun with the definite article. According to this criterion, personal names in High German (Hans), English (John) and French (Jean), for example, fall into a different class than in colloquial German (der Hans) and Portuguese (o João).

Semantic classification

The traditionally established classification (among others in school grammar) tries to secure semantic classes with syntactic criteria. It results in the following taxonomy:

• Noun (lat. nomen substantivum, also short substantivum)
• abstract noun (lat. nomen abstractum), e.g. art, love, mention, kindness
• Concreteness (lat. nomen concretum)
• proper name (Latin nomen proprium), e.g. Vanessa, Danube, Berlin, Alps
• generic name (or generic name, appellative[um]; Latin nomen appellativum or nomen commune)
• collective name (or collective noun; Latin nomen collectivum)
• Substance name (or substance designation; Latin: nomen materiale)

Sometimes common nouns are subordinated to common nouns, or common nouns and common nouns are subordinated to common nouns. Furthermore, a distinction can be made between countable nouns and uncountable nouns, non-count nouns and uncount nouns.

• An abstract is an appellative that refers to something abstract. Typical abstracts are nouns and do not form a plural, like hostility.
• A concreteness is an appellative that refers to concrete objects.
• A proper noun is a noun that has only specific reference and refers to a single entity without subsuming it under a term. The entity can also be a collective (see below), like Alpen.
• An appellative is a noun that refers to entities by subsuming them under a term. It can have specific or generic reference.
• A collective noun is an appellative (typically concrete) that groups a set of individuals together as a complex entity, like Gebirge, Polizei. In German, collectives break down into two syntactic classes, mass nouns and individual nouns. According to the syntactic criteria applicable to these, Gebirge, Familie and Strauß are individual nouns, while Polizei, Geflügel and Obst are mass nouns.

• An individual noun is a concrete noun that refers to a delimited object. In German, individual nouns form the plural (grains) and are combined with the indefinite article (a grain), cardinal number words (two grains) and the quantifier many (grains).
• A mass noun is a concrete that refers to a "continuous" object, that is, one whose parts fall under the same concept as the object itself. (A part of water is again water; but a part of a table is not a table). In German, mass nouns form either no plural (*Blute) or a plural of sorts (Weine are not specimens, but sorts of wine). They are not combined with the indefinite article or cardinal number words (*one blood, *two bloods) unless varieties are again meant (one wine, two wines). Moreover, they are combined with the quantifier much (much blood/wine).

Morphological classification

Morphological criteria ­used include declension class and word formation status.­ The latter gives the following classification:

• Noun
• primary noun, e.g. delusion, friend, grain
• secondary noun, e.g. mention (from mention), kindness (from kindly), bearer (from bear).

A secondary noun is one that is formed by derivation, namely nounification. A primary noun is morphologically simple, that is, neither derived nor compound.